Nostalgia
by keeponwritin
Summary: I guess I'm being kind of hypocritical here. Oversimplifying things, and all. But I like to think that's how we survive. [oneshot.]


A/N: Dude, I have no idea. The idea was like lightning while I was watching Weird Science last night, I ran to my computer and went with it. So it kept me up another... half an hour, or hour. Oh, well. It's a little short, and I'm not sure I like it that much. Enjoy.

When a girl's going through those final awkward stages of adolescence, those moments when she's beginning to see herself no longer as a child, but as an independent, free-thinking adult, it's hard to distinguish what lies beneath. The process is too generic. It's happened to every woman who's ever lived, so you can't blame the world for lumping them all into a group of rebellious miscreants. Or maybe I'm wrong; maybe it didn't always happen to women. That would probably explain things better, explain why we still can't seem the grasp the idea of slow but intense maturation, why parents still have trouble keeping their unruly kids' under control. But what happens when someone gets lumped into a group she knows she doesn't belong in? How does she fight her way out? _Should _she fight her way out? If the world wasn't going to understand, there was just no point in trying.

So I never did.

But I should've known anyway. It's always the wary that get stuck with that which they'd tried to avoid. I tried to evade adolescence. Not adolescence, I mean... the angst. I just smiled. I smiled and when I smiled, everyone smiled. I thought I could just get through it with that. With a big cheery smile, and the big cheery smiles reflected back at me. Then one day, I woke up and smiled, and the world didn't smile back. And when there's no one there to smile back, there aren't many reasons to smile.

I guess I'm almost being hypocritical here. Oversimplifying things, and all. But I like to think that's how you survive. Nostalgically glossing over the parts you didn't like, glorifying the parts you did.

But that's how it felt, at the time. Like it was one day, or one minute, in which everything in my life turned to black. Now I see it for what it really was: a downward spiral, downward into bitterness. But it was the process of making me bitter that made me bitter, until bitterness was all I knew. And when you live your life by one stupid principle and survive like I did, you become superior. Or so you think.

And that's what I did.

With superiority came invincibility. I think it was grade eight. Maybe nine. I'd had insults hurled at me, I'd been mocked, I'd been rejected and torn apart. I stopped listening. When I didn't listen, nothing could hurt me. So when the occasional word slipped into my ear and I recognized the voice of a friend, I held it in. It wasn't like I had a choice. I never stopped fully listening. I always had one ear open. Things always hurt me. I guess I just wish they hadn't.

A lot of my life revolves around one solitary gun, in the hands of one solitary boy who spoke so little, but said so much. If I could live that moment now, I think I'd kill Rick. I'd be in jail, I know. I'm beginning to think jail is better than this, though. This little bullet, the flap of a butterfly's wings. The chain reaction leading to my downward spiral. To cynicism.

I didn't love Sean. I didn't love Sean at all at that point. I barely considered him an acquaintance at that point. But he was my history. And he went away. Sean had taken a lot before--with his parents, with Tyler, with living on his own. But the question on everyone's mind, everyone that went to Degrassi and knew Sean at least somewhat.. if someone like Sean couldn't deal, what hope was there for the rest of us? Maybe he did pull that trigger, maybe he did kill Rick. Maybe he was a big baby that whole time at Degrassi. Maybe he had us fooled.

But I watched out the window in the backseat of a car as my history ran away.

And maybe Ellie cried more, silently in the passenger's seat. Sean was her present, after all. Sean was her now. But a little piece of me fell away that day.

I grew numb. I grew detached. My grades slipped, my socialness slipped, my need for peace of mind slipped. I just let it go. And I guess in a way he caught me. In another way, he destroyed me. In my mind, he brought me down to the bottom of the barrel, slowly and gently. Jay. His name on my tongue is like poison candy. But I was curious, I was desperate. I thought the ravine was perfect for me, feeling literally like an escape from school and home. Jay didn't care about my feelings or how I was doing in post-shooting life--I should've known he was behind it--and I loved that. I just stood there, Jay looking up at me contemplatively, the fire reflecting in his eyes, warming me. That's when you go crazy. When you want to do something, but you know it's bad for you. When you're trying to think about all the terrible things Jay has done to you, ruining Sean, almost ruining your relationship with Chris, causing the shooting which lead you right down to this, but all you do is look up at him with wide eyes hiding their own fear and reach forward towards the button of his jeans.

When you have it once, you need it again. If you just go crazy once, what's the point? I needed the attention, I needed to feel loved, I needed Jay to touch me. But never harshly. With his fingers in my hair and on my neck. I threw away everyone else in my life. I probably threw away Jay, too, in a way. He wasn't really part of the equation. It could've been anyone, and I would feel just as fine, just as numb.

When the first thought entered in my mind that I might have an STD, I thought about all the times Manny and I had giggled about boys. How we'd freak out over a peck on the cheek or one single date. Going down on boys wasn't part of the equation. But I guess we'd both ruined that.

But the most painful thing of all were the years I'd then spent on this relationship. Snake. Snake was always there for me, whether as Mr. Simpson or Archie, and I'd spent those past couple years building up this relationship, to where I loved him as my brother's father, and as my mom's husband, and as a stepdad. He tried to help me, though. He tried to help me put life in perspective and see the glass half-full after the shooting. I didn't even try to listen. And when I stood there and had to tell my parents about everything, and the shame in his eyes, how he couldn't even look at me. I think that was the breaking point.

I was treated, I guess. But no one ever saw it as a cry for help. So I tried, as best I could, to get back to normal life. Cut Jay loose, hung with Manny, tried to forget about the shooting as quickly as possible. And in a way, I returned to normality. But it wasn't pre-shooting normality. I don't think we could ever go back. It was my mature normality, where the world's hues aren't so rosy and inviting. And who knows, whether I went through the generic process. Or maybe the girl I was at the ravine was who I was always supposed to be. But all maybe's are are justifications. And what was there to justify?


End file.
